A Time of Tigers - From Peasant to Emperor

The demons loved the taste of that. All that hope, and those promises, dragged down. They gobbled it greedily. They loved the broken promises and shattered futures more than they loved even those memories of the past. The dreams Oliver had of improving his swordsmanship, even though he hadn't had as much time to focus solely on that as of late. He'd hoped to walk in Dominus' footsteps further, so that he might bear the Patrick title more strongly.

Now he only found a sour taste in thinking of that. Patrick title? He was no Patrick. The very heart of his being was a long held lie.

To run further in the darkness, to push his physical limits, not even truly in search of breaking through the Boundaries, but for that old progress that he'd once chased so simply in the Black Mountains. To push himself by the mountain streams. To chase that sacred simplicity of those heights.

That too shattered.

A quiet life, in which he could disappear for a few weeks at a time, to perform his duties as a General, and Nila could do hers, as a hunter, and now as a merchant, and then they could reunite, and regale each other with stories. The two of them desired their freedom more than anything else. They were terrified of a partner that would seek to have them held in one place. He'd held that so closely to him, but now there was no future in which that could exist, in which he could be the same man that he was before.

The scars that his heart had already borne were now entirely shattered. All that Oliver Patrick, Tempest and Beam had once been was eaten away. Every scrap of him, every bit of ambition, and then too, every bit of suffering, that which ought to have carried so much meaning. The failures that he'd accumulated, and never been able to overcome. The rawness of the pain that came with them. The demons in that dark basement gathered them all up, and they gobbled through them.

Bone, flesh, tendons, any scrap of sinew. Even blood was mopped up from the floor, lapped up as if they were dogs drinking from puddles. They left all clean, pristine and empty. So complete was their destruction that one could not even tell what had occurred there. For nothing remained. No head, no eyes for Oliver to even have seen what had happened to him, and no mind to think upon it. No nerves to feel the pain. No bones upon which to stand. There was nothing at all, complete emptiness and void. Even the demons vanished now into the shadows, beyond the walls, declaring that they would return one day, if ever there was enough flesh for them to bite upon.

There was nothing, except that red-gold beating heart.

On the floor, by itself, with no arteries or veins to attach to it. Even its heart-like quality seemed to diminish as it lay there.

What a cruelty it was. For all the suffering that Oliver had invited in, that pressure was still there. It was there enough that, upon that very last piece of Oliver, even without the demons to feed upon it, there was still exerted a force that could mold, and change. Pressure it exerted, till the heart could beat no longer. Till its ovular shape caved, and became more spherical. Until the give in the flesh could give no longer, and it was hardness. The last spurts of blood came out with it. Harder and harder it became.

A perfect sphere, golden red. That was what was left.

And still, the pressure did not abate. Still, the Gods had not had their fill of Oliver Patrick. Still, those that had watched him since the storm that had declared his birth, cruelly, did they have their hands clenched together, exerting a further gravity on him.

That golden red sphere, just smaller than a human heart, it became smaller still. The pressure, rather than abating, it only built. It had been relieved for a second, but now it came with an increasing vengeance.

The stones that bore the basement floor could not bear it. This tiny sphere, now impossible to tell the colour of it, forced a crater through them. It made them crack, and give way, as it fell down with an impossible density.

Further it went, smaller it became, until the eye could no longer see it. The only acknowledgement of its existence was the ripples that it caused on the world around it. The entirety of the floor in the basement buckled. That room that had seemed so large shattered. The floors above it fell with it. The walls came down, and the roof. That giant mansion, built solidly of stone, was reduced to nothing more than rubble beneath the night sky.

The dark trees of the forest, where Oliver had called to Hod for assistance. Now, if he'd had a thought to think, he would have been glad that Hod was not there, to be caught up in the destruction.

That terrifying house was reduced to nothing more than rubble, and then dust, as that now invisible little sphere brought about such a force upon it all. Even the air itself was not immune. The dust began to whip, driven by a wind, and now that wind, and that rising storm, was the only evidence of the thing's existence.

Greedily did it grow, beneath that starry night's sky, encouraged by the moon. It whipped, and it whipped, the pressure building and building, until finally, it seemed to have had its fill.

A storm that tore apart the forest, and made the house a distant memory. Lightning that flashed across the sky. Dark clouds that hid the moon and stars from sight. It stabilized there, as a thing that ought not to have been. As a void within the existence of reality that needed its fill.

And there, right in the heart of that churning storm, where the invisible centre lay, overcome by pressure. An angry thing it ought to have been. Rage, for the storm and lightning around it. There, one saw the tiniest little glimmer of peace.